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It is another of the miraculous things about mankind that there is no pain nor passion that does not radiate to the ends of the earth. Let a man in a garret but burn with enough intensity and he will set fire to the world.

Your task is not to foresee the future, but to enable it.

Even our misfortunes are a part of our belongings

Vol de Nuit (1931) (translated into English as Night Flight)

A rock pile ceases to be a rock pile the moment a single man contemplates it, bearing within him the image of a cathedral.

The machine does not isolate us from the great problems of nature but plunges us more deeply into them.

It is another of the miraculous things about mankind that there is no pain nor passion that does not radiate to the ends of the earth. Let a man in a garret but burn with enough intensity and he will set fire to the world.

Life has taught us that love does not consist in gazing at each other but in looking outward together in the same direction. (Translated by Lewis Galantière in "Wind, Sand and Stars")

Each man must look to himself to teach him the meaning of life. It is not something discovered; it is something molded.

Nobody grasped you by the shoulder while there was still time. Now the clay of which you were shaped has dried and hardened, and naught in you will ever awaken the sleeping musician, the poet, the astronomer that possibly inhabited you in the beginning.

Transport of the mails, transport of the human voice, transport of flickering pictures — in this century, as in others, our highest accomplishments still have the single aim of bringing men together.

"I swear that what I went through, no animal would have gone through." This sentence, the noblest ever spoken, this sentence that defines man's place in the universe, that honors him, that re-establishes the true hierarchy, floated back into my thoughts.

It seems that perfection is attained, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing more to take away.

Here is my secret. It is very simple. It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; What is essential is invisible to the eye.

Variant translations: Here is my secret. It is very simple: one sees well only with the heart. The essential is invisible to the eyes.The essential things in life are seen not with the eyes, but with the heart.

Confuse not love with the raptures of possession, which bring the cruellest of sufferings. For, notwithstanding the general opinion, love does not cause suffering: what causes it is the sense of ownership, which is love's opposite.